I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

Liberty! -- Electric word!

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

Many a humble soul will be amazed to find that the seed it sowed in weakness in the dust of daily life has blossomed into immortal flowers under the eye of the Lord.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

Mary! Mary! My dear, let me reason with you. I hate reasoning, John, —especially reasoning on such subjects. There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing; and you don't believe in it yourselves, when it comes to practice. I know you well enough, John. You don't believe it's right any more than I do; and you wouldn't do it any sooner than I.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

One should have expected some terrible enormities charged to those who are excluded from heaven, as the reason; but no, —they are condemned for not doing positive good, as if that included every possible harm.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

Sobs, heavy, hoarse and loud, shook the chairs, and great tears fell through his fingers on the floor - just such tears, sir, as you dropped into the coffin where lay your firstborn son; such tears, woman, as you shed when you heard the cries of your dying babe; for, sir, he was a man, and you are but another man; and, woman, though dressed in silk and jewels, you are but a woman, and, in life's great straits and mighty griefs, ye feel but one sorrow!

— Harriet Beecher Stowe